Short is harder

The short version takes longer. That is the whole secret, and it is why so few people write it.

Eight hundred words is easy. You start, you keep going, you put everything in, and at the end there is a piece. Nothing was decided because nothing had to be. Every idea that turned up got a paragraph. The reader can sort it out.

Two hundred words means choosing. Which of the four ideas is the idea. Which of the three examples earns its place. Which sentence is doing the work and which one is standing next to it looking busy. Every cut is a small decision, and a decision costs more than a sentence.

I notice this most with briefs. The long brief arrives quickly, with a background section and a context section and a list of considerations. The one-page brief arrives late, after somebody has sat with it, and it is the one the team can actually build from.

The reader can feel the difference, and not because they count. A piece that was cut down carries the shape of the decisions inside it. A piece that was allowed to run carries the shape of a writer who did not want to choose. One of them respects the minute it is asking for. The other is asking the reader to do the editing.

When something I write runs long, I no longer ask what to add. I ask which of the things in it I would defend to a person who was already halfway out of the room. Usually one. Sometimes none, and that is also an answer.

Attention is the thing being borrowed. Length is the interest rate.